We all shared a beef burek, a cheese one, and a spinach and cheese burek. They were all good! I think we agreed the cheese one was the best though, can’t go wrong with cheese.

Food number two that I tried was langos. Langos, fried dough topped with sour cream and sheep cheese, quickly became a huge favorite of mine. I had it three times and regret nothing.

Langos cu smântână si brânză (fried dough with sour cream and cheese)

The final night we were there, Jess, Colin, and I had kürtőskalács. Kürtőskalács is spit-cake that is made from yeast dough coated with sugar and butter before being cooked. It is sold at a stand in the center of the Cetatea Alba Carolina, which is normally easy to find because of the groups of excited children clustering around it!

Kürtőskalács, a sweet yeasted dough that is roasted on a spit.

I got a really cool picture of it cooking! Once it’s cooked it can be coated with various toppings. We had ours with cinnamon.

Roasting the kürtőskalács

Later on I had a stew called pomona porcului that made my night. It had sausage and cubes of pork with polenta in the center. The polenta was great! We had seasoned mushrooms to share which were some of the best mushrooms I’ve ever had.

Pomona Porcului – Pork and polenta stew

It was the perfect end to the field season and helped me get through the overnight train to Budapest!

Alba Iulia is a beautiful city! After traveling for two and a half days we arrived in Romania, greeted by Dr. Ciugudean and many blooming roses.

After arriving, the bioarchaeology fun began. Our second day in the lab, we performed an inventory of the skeletal remains from three Bronze Age sites that are housed at the museum. Inventory, while not the most exciting activity, was essential for finding out which burials were preserved and which bones were present for each provenance. All of the labels associated with the bones were recorded and some bags were given different labels so that they could be located more easily. Thankfully there should be no need to do this again…

After we finished the inventory, we started analysis for two of the individuals. This included gently cleaning the bones with materials that would not scratch them, like toothpicks and toothbrushes. Many of the bones had to be cleaned in order for the features to be visible, which is needed for identification and further analysis. I mostly worked on cleaning the bones while Jess recorded the information so that it could be accessible and organized.

We also scored tooth wear in order to estimate age for one of the individuals.

It’s been a great first few days here in Romania, surely with more to follow!

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